by Mary Gentle
‘Yes, I can see that would present problems.’
The door opened; Neferet’s women servants came in, followed by Neferet herself–she looked taken aback to see me still present, and she glared at Rekhmire’, but since neither of us moved, she gestured for wine to be served.
After a warming sip of the wine, I had courage enough to look her in the face. ‘Couldn’t you go to Florence as Leon’s mistress?’
The lines of her face spoke, I don’t know what business this is of yours! more clearly than any word could have.
She nevertheless seated herself gracefully on one of the window-embrasures, reclining on cushions embroidered in the Alexandrine style. ‘Think, Madonna Ilaria! Leon arrives without his new wife and infant child, but with a mistress–and a foreign mistress at that! How long before the family demands he be respectable?’
Something under a quarter of an hour after passing Florence’s walled gate, I suspected, but didn’t desire to say. Neferet’s long-fingered large hands still faintly trembled with anger. No need to draw the lightning down on myself.
‘If I go as a cook or servant,’ she said, her graceful reclining pose stiffening with her neck, ‘or anything else an unmarried woman may do, I will be assumed as a matter of course to be Leon’s whore.’
Her head turned: she fixed Leon with a desolate stare.
‘And I am your wife.’
Leon Battista sprang up, went to the window, and knelt down beside her. I thought it tactful to turn away and converse with Rekhmire’ while Leon comforted her.
I drained my wine glass. ‘No one would care in Alexandria, would they?’
‘That they are man and man, not man and wife? Likely not; why should they? If they want to live as man and woman, and are discreet, Ty-ameny would permit it. Given Master Leon’s interest in the arts and architecture, and the Classical writings, I think she would even forgive him being a Frank.’
There was a very faint teasing air about that last. I smiled briefly at him.
‘But still,’ Rekhmire’ murmured, the amusement leaving his expression, ‘Neferet didn’t expect to return to Alexandria without him. That will hurt her.’
‘I would take you with me!’ Leon’s voice rose. ‘I swear by Christ on the Tree! If there was any way it could be managed—’
Perhaps the matter had been enough on my mind recently that I saw through it, in that instant, to an answer. As if I reached up and caught the tail of the lightning-bolt, and was instantly gifted with illumination.
Yes: this will work!
But she will not like it, I realised. It may work, but she will hate it and me…
I stood up, finding by that I drew Rekhmire’’s and Leon’s attention. Leon had one arm about Neferet’s waist, where he knelt at her side. Neferet’s large fingers were interlocked with his.
‘You said it yourself,’ I remarked, meeting Neferet’s gaze. ‘There’s no role for an unmarried woman in a house in Florence. Or for one married to a different man, or to a widow, unless you could produce visible evidence of a husband. You wouldn’t be trusted because you’re a foreigner.’
Leon scowled, looking as if he would interrupt.
‘I found Venice far more confining than Rome or Carthage,’ I said, ‘and in Carthage I was a slave! But leaving that aside: in Venice, I’ve been a woman. In Rome, I was,’ remembering Leon’s presence, I stumbled over, ‘dressed as–a man.’
Rekhmire’ gestured with an open demanding palm. ‘And?’
I turned to the other Alexandrine. ‘Neferet, couldn’t you go to Florence—’
Some friendly deity moved me to add a phrase:
‘—disguised as a man?’
She stared.
I added hastily, ‘Nobody would think anything of Leon taking on an Alexandrine scribe as a secretary—’
‘Disguised as a man?’
Neferet shrieked loudly enough that I had time to think I would, if I had simply said go to Florence as a man, either now be deaf, or have had something injurious thrown at me. And likely deserve it.
I snapped out, ‘If I can disguise myself as a man, you can!’
I saw her turn the matter over in her mind. She knows, from gossip with Honorius’s men-at-arms, that I was a thoroughly convincing young man in Rome. She has been telling me, all the while I’ve been here, that truly I am a woman. If I can pass as a man, therefore–why not she?
‘I won’t do it!’ She stood up, trembling. ‘It’s undignified! And you—’ She swung around, pointing a finger at Rekhmire’. ‘You’ve never believed me anything but Jahar pa-sheri! You see me as a monster, don’t you?’
Rekhmire’, pale under his reddish skin, sat bolt upright. ‘No more than I do Ilario!’
Frustration sealed her lips: she glared at Rekhmire’, and at me, and turned on her heel to shout at Leon Battista.
The Florentine was still kneeling on the floor beside the window-seat. He looked up, without rising.
‘Neferet–I really don’t mind.’
Her hand made a fist, in the folds of her dress. She stared so intensely at him, her glance would have made glass catch fire and burn.
‘What do you mean?’
He put a hand on the window embrasure and pushed himself up, making a face as his knees evidently pained him. The wet cold in the Doge’s prison takes a long time to leave a man’s bones.
‘I don’t care.’ He walked over and took each of Neferet’s hands in his own. ‘Whether you’re a man or a woman, whether you dress as a man or a woman–none of that has any importance. It’s you I love.’
Neferet began to cry.
I had my arm under Rekhmire’’s other armpit, acting as an additional crutch, and tactfully removed us from the room. I signalled as I left for one of the men-at-arms to guard the door–since there is an obvious method by which Leon could convince Neferet of his love, and if I were Leon, I wouldn’t even waste so much time as it would take to reach the bedrooms.
Heading by common consent for the kitchen, where it would be warm, Rekhmire’ shook his head as he walked, still gripping lightly at my arm.
‘I haven’t seen Neferet in a scribe’s kilt in fifteen years. And then only when court formalities wouldn’t let her get away with anything else.’ He steered us towards the kitchen inglenook, with a wave to the cooks. ‘Better send up the wine in wooden bowls–it’s not like the house has much Venetian glass left!’
‘You’re glad for her.’
‘Am I?’ He busied himself with being seated, tucking his crutch beside him, and easing that leg into a stretch towards the fire. The heat of the fire, perhaps, cast a flush onto his cheek.
‘She’s your friend. You’re happy that she’s happy.’ I winced at a dimly heard crash from the depths of the house. ‘Or at least, if not happy, that she can be with Leon.’
‘The Florentines will find her a trifle feminine, I think.’ He gave me a sudden grin. ‘But then, all we Alexandrine eunuchs are feminine males, according to common talk!’
I grinned back. ‘I don’t think you’d suit a Frankish skirt and bodice…’
In the hours following, Neferet’s quarrel broke out from time to time, like an unquenched brush-fire–but it had little enough true heat, given that she would break off from her ranting to look in wonder at Leon, and her demeanour invariably softened after that. Since the Alberti were due to depart in two days, she had perforce to make a decision and pack.
I woke early on that morning, to feed Onorata, and to bid Neferet farewell. I found her in the atrium of the house–and for a moment truly did not recognise Neferet in this slim and straight-shouldered man, dressed in the short linen jacket and white kilt of an Alexandrine scribe.
‘Ilaria.’ She spoke with the pitch of her voice lower, a little husky.
Her skin showed smooth, under the linen. Her face looked curiously bare with only a line of kohl above each row of eyelashes. She had her hair cut short, falling to touch her shoulders, as one of the Alexandrine customs is, and a narr
ow braided reed-band holding it back from her eyes.
Honorius’s men-at-arms, at the house door, could be heard greeting Leon Battista.
‘Good fortune,’ I said, a little hurriedly, not able to put all I thought into words.
‘You too.’ She–he–smiled.
It was a morning cool and damp enough for fog, rolling in with the smell of the sea about it, clinging to Venice’s brick walls and Roman-tiles roofs, and filtering the sunlight to diffuse glory. At the gate of the Alexandrine house, Leon Battista awaited us. He greeted Neferet with no more than a companionable nod–something neither his servants nor the oarsmen of his boat would be surprised to see, in a man collecting a new officer for his household.
Their eyes linked. It was a different enough story that I thought I hope they can be discreet.
‘This is a custom among my people.’ Neferet opened a small folded cloth that she carried. I saw a glint of reddish black. She held up a braided loop, handing one to Leon Battista, and one to Rekhmire’, and–after a fractional hesitation–one to me.
A bracelet, I found, clasped with gold, and made with braided shining hair. Neferet’s hair, now that she had dropped her hair to man’s length.
‘Thank you.’ Bereft of words, I could say nothing else.
Neferet, or Jahar, gave me a look with humour in the depths of it, and murmured, ‘Think of it as a wedding gift…’
I stumbled though Leon’s formal farewells, and watched as Rekhmire’ limped forward on his crutch to give last departing words to both apparent men, all the while my thumb caressing the braided bracelet, and the damp fog pearling on my velvet over-gown.
I turned and went back into the embassy.
A few moments later, Rekhmire’ stamped back inside–as well as a man walking with a crutch may stamp–blowing on his fingers against the damp cold, and swearing.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘—Holy dung that hatched the cosmos-egg!’ he concluded. ‘Damn that woman!’
Having seen the boat depart, and Rekhmire’’s salute to it, I’d thought all well.
‘She still won’t tell me where Herr Mainz is!’ He made a fist, his face scarlet. ‘Nor will Master Alberti. And they wait until now to tell me this!’
‘Why won’t they?’
‘Some nonsense that the Florentine Duke will demand Herr Mainz, if he appears openly in Venice, and that at the moment, La Serenissima would probably keep Florence quiet by handing the man over. If they don’t imprison him on their own behalf, and try to beat the secret of this printing-machina out of him!’
I shrugged, following the Egyptian towards the kitchens. ‘If I were Herr Mainz, I’d certainly want to stay out of sight.’
‘Sacred Eight, I want to help the man!’ The padded end of the crutch thwacked the short, wide floorboards. ‘Ty-ameny needs him; I want to invite him to Alexandria—’
‘—Which, until the weather’s better, is inaccessible by road, and no ship will risk these seas. So he can’t leave Venice.’
‘Sun god’s egg!’
‘You would have said precisely the same thing, if you were in Neferet’s place.’
While true, it was not tactful; I was not in the least surprised when he stomped away towards the stairs, muttering under his breath. ‘I could have hidden him here! Sent him to Edirne with the Turk! Something!’
I heard him calling for fresh ink as he vanished into his room, and guessed he intended a ciphered message to follow Neferet, and say this and more.
I reflected: If I were her, I’d make sure to drop the paper in a canal–or in the Arno, if it reaches her in Florence.
Florence, I belated realised.
My wife and my husband will end up living within the walls of the same city.
The man-at-arms Berenguer grinned at me, the following morning.
‘Get your cloak, Mistress Ilario. You’re being abducted.’
7
It said something for the state of mind to which constant threat had reduced me that I wore a dagger on my belt about the house–though the dress’s hanging sleeves might have made drawing it quickly impractical.
One look at Berenguer convinced me I had no need.
‘Abducted?’
‘Sold,’ he corrected himself, picking my winter cloak up from where it lay across the back of the wooden settle. He held it up, as a gentleman does for a lady. ‘Betrayed by the faithless mercenaries employed by the foreign captain Lord Honorius…’
Berenguer might not have liked a hermaphrodite when he met me in Rome. He might from time to time still give me wary looks when the two of us chanced to be in a room alone together, as if I might leap on him, and seduce and rape him simultaneously. But as for not trusting him to be faithful to my father…
I walked across the room to stand with my back to the black-haired man-at-arms, letting him settle the woollen cloak around my shoulders.
‘Who’s buying me?’ I inquired.
Berenguer somewhat automatically tied my cloak-ties for me and then stood back a little awkwardly and permitted me to raise the silk-lined and fur-trimmed hood myself. His sharp glance assessed me.
‘The weasel-lord,’ he announced. ‘What’s-name? The one with the horse-faced wife.’
‘Federico. That’s my foster father you’re insulting,’ I added, settling the folds of the green cloak about me. ‘Accurately, I may say. Although Valdamerca has her charitable moments.’
Berenguer chuckled, at least partly with relief that his lord’s son-daughter hadn’t chosen to take offence when treated like a woman and spoken to like a man.
‘Her husband’s about to be very charitable!’ He held the room door open for me, hand on the hilt of his bastard sword. ‘Do you think you could look frightened for us?’
‘Us’, it transpired, were fifteen of my father’s soldiers–Attila and Tottola without smiles, and therefore at their most intimidating; every man else in brigandine or breastplate, with swords or maces; even Saverico with his polished sallet under his arm, a red and gold silk sash tied from shoulder to waist.
A tall, thin soldier with his cloak hood raised proved, on lifting the edge of it, to be Honorius.
‘Help,’ I observed gravely. ‘Oh, oh, I am being stolen away! Will nobody help a poor defenceless—’
‘“Defenceless”’, my backside!’ Honorius brushed his knuckles against my cheek with open affection. ‘I told Berenguer when he brought me this story–if we just take the money and hand you over, not only will we be rich, I’ll have some peace and quiet!’
Under the cover of general amusement, and donning of cloaks over armour, intended to disguise the immediate passage of armed mercenaries through Venice’s alleys, I asked Honorius, ‘What in Christ-the-Emperor’s name does he think he’s doing!’
‘Lord Videric? Sending your foster father to buy off my soldiers. After all, they’re only common mercenaries.’
Over the less-than-sincere thanks offered by his men at that point, I managed to amend my question. ‘Truly, I meant Federico.’
‘Being desperate! That’s what he’s doing.’ My father produced a short length of rope, wrapped it about my wrists in a false knot, and gave me the two ends to grip in my hands so that I looked sufficiently bound. ‘I spoke to the Egyptian about this. He suggests that, if messages and travellers are getting through from the Peninsula, Federico will have heard directly from Videric. I think he’s right. Whether or not Videric knows we disposed of Carrasco, he’s clearly told Federico to move his arse.’
I nodded. ‘Something was going to happen, now. It’s inevitable.’
The sky above me was the colour of lapis lazuli ashes. The warm air shifted, bringing me the scents of cooking, canal water, and the lagoon. However cold it may still be, and how wet, the world is beginning to move again. If long sea voyages are still unsafe, there are the coastal routes. And some of the better-maintained roads, the Via Augusta included, will be open.
‘Is Rekhmire’ coming to make sure I’m proper
ly sold?’
Honorius shook his head. ‘He’d be recognised. I’ve requested him to stay here with the rest of the guard, and protect my granddaughter.’
I ignored a stab of disappointment. Because, injured leg or no, I will trust Rekhmire’’s determination to protect Onorata above most men’s.
‘Videric will send more men to kill me,’ I observed as we walked across the Campo S. Barnaba. ‘True, the more men he hires, the more gossip, the more danger people will hear what he’s doing–but I think he’ll be willing to risk that, now.’
‘Bandits. Pirates. Thugs.’ Honorius grunted. He pulled the front of his hood forward. Dressed as a plain soldier, there was nothing to mark him out from the other cloaked mercenaries. ‘Knew I should have brought more than three lances…’
‘We’re worth six!’ Saverico grinned. Tottola slapped him on the shoulder, which all but sent the slight ensign staggering.
I expected a boat to be waiting, but we instead walked on into the mass of lanes and small squares, until we had left the Dorsodura quarter, and finally approached the Grand Canal. We emerged on the edge of that wide thoroughfare at the foot of the Rialto Bridge.
Berenguer glanced at Honorius for permission, and fell in beside me as we walked in under the wooden roof that capped the bridge.
‘We’ve arranged a public place for the exchange.’ Berenguer’s grin showed two teeth missing, far back on the left side. ‘Less chance of anybody cheating…’
The sides of the bridge were also walled with solid planks, but no man could see that except from the outside. Inside, too many shop-booths blocked the line of sight; goods piled up clear to the bridge’s roof. We picked a way up the wide stone steps, between merchants and gossiping servants; groups of men purchasing goods or changing money; woman accompanied by male relatives or armed servants.
I shook my head, amazed. ‘Federico approached you directly?’
Berenguer gave that kind of shrug that invites discrete admiration. ‘Sent one of his servants. But I’d seen the man at that palazzo, when you went after the secretary. Told him I wouldn’t talk to anybody but his master.’
